Spes Hominum
by Michelle
Summary: After a rough day during the events of Iron Man 2, Natasha just wants to talk to Clint. For the cottoncandy-bingo prompt, "Fabric".


_This fic was inspired by Jo, based on a largely all-caps conversation we had over on Dreamwidth. You're the best, sweetie! Here's your Skype porn!_

_This is incorporates the prompt "fabric" from my cottoncandy-bingo card, so yay! for that._

_Enjoy!_

* * *

It was on days like today that she really fucking hated her assignment. From the moment Pepper called to wake her up at 4:30 (she'd only left Stark Enterprises a few hours before), through their working lunch with Tony Stark (really just trying to get him to sign things while he consumed prodigious amounts of blackish green sludge), right up until Pepper let her off early at 7 (quitting time was supposedly 6), today had not been a good day.

When it was just her and Pepper, things were okay, work moved smoothly even. Natasha was decent enough at cat herding (though Pepper was a genius), she liked being in places where she could take a shower every day (sometimes, even a _bath_), and there was no downside to spending weeks on end in Malibu. Except for Tony Stark, who tended to force himself into the details of your life whether you liked it or not. She couldn't even imagine why a woman like Pepper would choose to work with him.

Well, no, she could, Anybody with eyes could. But that didn't mean Potts didn't have the patience and fortitude of a saint.

Natasha sighed as she unlocked the door to her apartment. Today really had been too long. She was already running on less sleep than she liked, only to have Tony send her all over creation on inane errands, and in between reporting his activities to both Potts and SHIELD, Natasha was surprised she hadn't fallen over yet. It was probably the coffee she was mainlining, black with one sugar. Nasty stuff, she preferred tea, but hanging out with Barton all these years had somehow made the acidic beverage palatable.

Just inside the door, she leaned against the wall and stepped out of her heels, moaning in relief as she massaged her ankles. Maybe she ought to add "ability to wear heels for 18 hours a day" to the increasingly lengthy list of the super powers of Pepper Potts. Shit, she should recommend Potts for the Avengers Initiative. She certainly would be a better fit than Stark.

Natasha stripped out of her too-snug pencil skirt and blouse on the way to the bathroom, happy to be rid of them. Say what you would about cat suits, but they were far more comfortable than the things she was expected to wear for this detail. She leaned to adjust the temperature of the water, wondering for at least the tenth time today when she might be able to wrap this Stark thing up. As it stood, she saw no end in sight.

She turned the knob to reroute the water to the showerhead, sighing as she stepped underneath the hot spray, letting the heat take away some of her stress.

"Fuck," she muttered because it had just been that kind of day.

She stood in the shower until the water started to grow cold, then spent twenty more minutes wrapped in a towel perched on the bathroom sink, trying to put off reporting in to Fury by untangling her hair. Not for the first time, she thought about cutting it, but she knew that Clint liked it, liked playing with the ends of it while they relaxed together, liked to tangle his hands in it when they were having sex, and she in turn had discovered that she liked it when he did that.

She liked it a lot.

Too bad she hadn't seen him in a while, nor did she have any expectation that she would in the near future. It had been almost a month since his impromptu visit, and the memories of that time still brought a blush to her face, still made her squirm and slide her hand down her body when she was alone at night.

It had felt different when he came out to LA to see her, especially as time had grown shorter. The banter was still there, the easy, quiet camaraderie that made them work together so well, but something had changed, shifted slightly, and when he'd held her hand and pushed up into her early in the morning before she drove him to the airport, the weight of his gaze made her come unexpectedly hard underneath him.

She hung her towel on the bar behind the door, then padded into the bedroom, trying not to think too much about how her heart hurt when she thought about him. Sure, they spent their downtime together whenever they could. Sure, she'd never had a better partner on a job. Sure, he had an uncanny ability to read her mind in bed. But she didn't know what to _do_ about any of that. It was almost as if they existed in a kind of limbo, trapped between the expectations of who they were, who they were trained to be, and the deep, lingering desire to have a touchstone, something tangible in their lives to cling to when shit got real.

She sighed to herself, pulling on a pair striped boxers, ones she'd stolen from Clint during some forgotten mission long ago. She knew they were getting closer to it, having a discussion about whatever it was they were doing together; she saw it in his eyes when he visited, just as she saw it in his eyes when they video chatted (something she still couldn't believe that she, Natalia Alianova Romanova, assassin extraordinaire looked forward to at the end of the day). She didn't know what to say when they finally had said conversation, and she hated that feeling.

There was a man's shirt on the bed, a long sleeved button up, and she brought the fabric to her nose, imagining that she could still smell him on it. She'd been surprised when he brought a suit with him, even more surprised when he took her out on Saturday night to a restaurant she only recognized in passing. She wasn't sure if she would call it a date, but whatever it was, it hadn't ever been their style, not until he visited her three weeks ago, anyway.

Their style was carryout and shitty action movies or coffee and crossword puzzles, never dinner at places with a dress code. She found it natural with him though, easy even, to slip into a dress, put her arm through his, and let him pick out her entrée (but, good lord, not the wine). And when he took her home and helped her out of her clothes, she could tell that he was on the same precipice as she was, want and worry battling for control behind his eyes.

She slipped her arms into his button-up, rolled the sleeves to her elbows so she wasn't swimming in it, and wondered if he'd left it behind on purpose. Whatever his reasons, she was glad he did. Just touching the fabric, feeling it around it her, made her feel a closer to him. She sat down on her bed, booting up her laptop to send Fury her daily field report. There wasn't much to say beyond the usual, so it went quickly, and then she found herself hesitating.

She knew what she wanted to do – she wanted to call Clint, wanted to hear his voice and see his face, but that was at war with what she should do – eat something and go to bed. There was no telling the next time she might actually be able to get a full night's rest, and she shouldn't be wasting it on video chatting.

As much as she was exhausted, she didn't stop herself from flipping on her webcam and clicking the Skype icon, telling herself that it might not even matter that she had a bit of spare time on her hands; Clint might not even be able to chat. But then she saw that he was there, and suddenly they were connected, and she was pretty sure she had a dopey grin on her face, at least as idiotic as the one he had on.

"You're early," he said by way of greeting.

"Pepper let me out an hour ago to make up for last night." Natasha sat a little straighter, trying to get comfortable.

"Long couple of days?" he asked, glancing over his shoulder at something off camera.

"That would be an understatement."

He held up a hand. "Give me a sec, okay?" He stood up, walked away from her view, and she heard some rustling in the background, followed by the telltale click of a door lock, and then he was back. "Sorry. Just wanted to make sure that we don't get interrupted."

There was a flicker in his eye, one she recognized from years of being around him, and she licked her lips in anticipation. Let no one ever say that the two of them were shy, but Clint was staying on base, and even though he had his own room as a senior agent, people were known to walk in unannounced.

"Anything exciting?"

Clint snorted, leaning back in his chair. "Nah, nothing. Just a bunch of scientists doing science."

She bit back her own laugh. "Is that what you put in your reports?"

He shrugged, one side of his mouth twisting upward. "Yeah, well, you know how I am."

She did.

"Anyway," he cleared his throat. "What's up?"

She had a thousand answers to that question, but none of them were quite right, so ended up with, "Can't a girl call her friend to see how he's doing?"

"She can," he said, the happy, lopsided grin she loved so much stretching across his face. Then he sobered slightly. "I'm glad you did. I've missed you, Nat."

These chats were always easier in person. Were he here in the room with her, she could act on her urge to climb into his lap and kiss the breath out of him. Were he here in the room, she could avoid putting anything too serious into words, showing him with her body instead. But he wasn't, so she couldn't.

"Yeah," she said quietly. "Me, too."

They talked for a while then, Natasha complaining about Stark (and maybe grudgingly admitting he wasn't a complete jackass all the time), Clint bemoaning the staggeringly high percentage of new recruits at his post (without ever using names, of course), and somehow they ended up staring at each other, not yet willing to disconnect. Clint was the one to break the silence, per usual.

"Can I ask you something?" he asked with a strange, uncomfortable look in his eye.

"Shoot." She knew what was coming, was glad he was going to be the brave one here.

"I was thinking, since I have a lot of time to do that," he said wryly. "And I was wondering if maybe you wanted to try this for real when all of this is over."

"Try what, exactly?" She tried to look encouraging, but she didn't exactly have a lot of experience with this kind of thing, and, well, she was pretty damn nervous, too.

"You and me. Us. Dating." He'd said it, put it out there, and there was no going back.

"Dating," she repeated, unable to keep a hint of sarcasm out of her voice, even if it was mostly for show. Wasn't dating something people who worked in cubicles did? Surely, it wasn't something for people like them.

"Whatever you want to call it," he shrugged, reading her expression. "Or not call it. You know that doesn't matter. I just thought that after you were done making sure Stark won't trip over his own shoelaces, and I'm done with all this crap in New Mexico . . ." He paused and took a deep breath. "I just thought it might be nice for us to . . . fuck, I don't know. To be an _us. _Not just as an afterthought or a random weekend thing, but you and me, for real."

Clint had his kicked puppy face, hope and fear and longing all mixed up in his expression, perfectly aware of how stupid he sounded, but unable to stop the word vomit. Maybe once she would have rolled her eyes and called him an idiot, but now, now she felt her heart actually skip a beat. Christ.

Natasha had thought she wasn't that kind of girl. She didn't need a picket fence or a dog or a house in the suburbs, and she didn't want children or a husband or an SUV. But she found that she very, very much wanted Clint, wanted to spend every minute with him, and best of all? She knew that he would never ask her to give anything up in order to be with him because he wanted her_, _not Natasha or Natalie or Nancy or any of the people she pretended to be, but _her_, the woman he called Nat and Tash and a thousand other silly pet names and she let him because it was _him_.

She knew she was being sappy and sentimental, and maybe it was because they've been apart for too long or because she'd had a shitty day and she really fucking missed him, but she was starting to think that he was on to something. So instead of asking for time to think it over, only to later chicken out and tell him no, she went along with the pleasant buzzing feeling in her head and said, "Okay."

His face lit up like she told him she'd bought him a pony. "Yeah?"

She couldn't help but return his dopey smile. "Yeah." She raised a finger. "We can _try_ it, but you have to file the paperwork with Coulson."

Even the threat of paperwork didn't faze him, and he kept on beaming at her. "Okay."

"And I expect regular foot massages," she said, figuring that he wasn't in an arguing mood.

"Okay, babe."

She narrowed her eyes. "And you definitely don't get to call me 'babe' in public."

"Sure," he said, his grin turning into a smirk. "Babe."

She did roll her eyes at him for that, but it wasn't out of annoyance but rather affection. He could be so exasperating, but damn it all if it didn't twist her up inside.

As much as she was enjoying this conversation, the day was starting to catch up with her, and she was overtaken by a sudden wave of sleepiness. She yawned and stretched, pressing her hands at the base of her back and arching to relieve some of the pressure. "Oh, that's nice," she muttered mostly to herself. "Well, I'm kind of . . ." she started to beg off for the rest of the evening, but then she noticed the look on Clint's face.

"Uh, Nat?" His voice was a little rough. "What are you wearing?"

Her tiredness suddenly gone, she leaned back from the computer to give him a better view. She tugged at the collar of the shirt nonchalantly. "Oh, just something my lover left behind."

"Your lover?" he grunted, clearly feeling pretty self-satisfied. "Should I be worried?"

Natasha tilted her head back, ran her finger down her throat, then popped open a few buttons on the shirt. "Probably," she said, her voice deceptively calm. "He's extremely hot. And good with his hands."

She kept undoing the buttons on his shirt, one by one, baring a strip of flesh between the hollow of her throat and her navel. She bit her lip when one of Clint's hands dropped below the level of the table. She pulled the sides of the shirt outward, just a little, not quite uncovering her breasts, but teasing at it, and she watched as he scooted his chair closer to the monitor as if he were somehow moving closer to her.

"You want me to get rid of this?" she asked, stroking her nipples through the fabric and feeling the first flush of arousal bloom.

"No!" he choked out, eyes wide. "Leave it on. I like seeing you in my clothes," he said, and judging from the way his left arm was moving, he wasn't joking.

"You like seeing me in your clothes?" she asked huskily, parting the fabric open slowly, exposing herself to the camera, to him. The cloth of the shirt was rough against her skin, and if she tried hard enough, she could pretend that he was here with her right now, and that it was the scratch of his calluses on her skin rather than the scrape of rough cotton. It wasn't – nothing could quite match the heat and precision of his touch – but for right now it was enough.

He let out a grunt, and she heard the metallic clatter of his belt buckle being undone.

"No fair, Barton," she said, moving her right hand lower to slip beneath the waistband of the boxers.

He grinned wolfishly with immediate understanding and pulled his t-shirt over his head.

"Better," she said, watching the way his muscles flexed and contracted as he moved. She ran her first two fingers around her clit, groaning at the sight of him. "But still not good enough." She made a motion with her free hand. "Move over to the bed. I want to see all of you."

"Yes, ma'am!" He leapt up, and the screen jostled for a minute as he carried it across the room. She took a moment to rest backward on her elbows in what she knew he would find an appealing position. They've done this before, even if they don't make a habit of it, and for all that she was ready for sleep a minute ago, now she just wanted to watch him come.

The image stilled as he set the computer down on the bed, and she was gratified to see him choke a little when he caught sight of her.

"Glad to see you're back," she said calmly, letting his shirt fall open. She cupped one hand below the curve of her breast, then flicked the nipple to attention, smiling coquettishly. Her other hand found its way back into her shorts, and she resumed the teasing motion, tracking his eyes as he watched her movements.

"Jesus, Nat," he hissed, reaching a hand forward and tilting his screen slightly. "You got started without me."

She shrugged. "Places to go, people to see, Barton."

"Yeah?" he managed, standing briefly to pull his pants off. "Who, exactly, are you going to see?"

She raised her hips off the bed briefly to pull the boxers over the curve of her ass, then dropped back down to toss them onto the floor. Spreading her legs, she said, "You."

He made a frustrated noise and cursed. "Lean the camera down, yeah?" he asked, and maybe she'd be more upset that he wanted a better view of her pussy, but his voice, the way he spoke was kind of making her sweat right now, and he'd always loved that part of her anyway. She angled the camera until he hissed out a low, "Yes," then she reached back down to play with herself, imagining that it was his hand at work, his tongue, his lips, his nose . . .

And then she needed to see him just as badly. He was sitting there, staring at her, grabbing his dick through his boxer briefs, and it was so close to what she really wanted, but nothing like it at all.

"I want to see you, Clint," she begged, not liking but not caring about the slight whine in her voice. He shucked his underwear at her command and continued pumping his cock, his hand stroking the rigid length from base to tip.

"Like that, babe?" he said, his voice uneven, jagged with lust.

"That'll do nicely," she said and moved her hand a little faster between her legs, trying to keep pace. Just knowing that he was watching her every movement . . . She tried to look at him, wanted to take in his muscular form, but the angle was difficult, and she cursed with frustration.

Clint must have noticed because he said, "Prop yourself up on the pillows."

She looked behind her on the bed, scooted backward to follow his directions, and oh _yes, _that was better. She sighed, sinking into the pile of pillows, and when she resumed swirling her fingers around her clit, she relaxed into the pleasant fog of sex with Clint.

"I want you to do what I say, okay? Can you do that for me, Natasha?" He only used that version of her name when it was important, and the difference cut through the haze in her brain, made her pay attention.

"Yeah, okay," she breathed.

"I want you to grab your breasts," he said, and she reluctantly removed the hand from between her legs. "Run the flat of your palm across your nipples, then pinch them. Yeah, just like that, baby," he praised, and she squeaked. "Now increase the pressure."

She knew what he was doing now as he rattled off the litany of things he'd learned about her body over the years – he was playing her like a fiddle or maybe stretching her like one of his bow strings, aware of everything he needed to do to get her off, even when he was in a different time zone.

She could barely remember a time before Clint, before he pulled her up and talked to her about ledgers and debts. And while they cleaned theirs together, they learned how the other moved, learned to watch someone else's back, learned how to let them watch yours in return.

When they'd finally fallen together, it had been good, better than good, and even though it was sometimes awkward as they learned each other's tics, the sheer physicality of sleeping with Clint Barton had been enough for her. It had been a new sensation, fucking someone because she wanted to and not because someone told her to, and once she started this . . . this _thing_ with him, she'd quickly realized that she didn't want it to stop.

He'd studied her, learned her, memorized the topography of her skin, the mountains and valleys of her body and all the places in between. He did it with patience and persistence, like he did all things he thought worth doing, and when he focused his sniper's attention on her, it was something of a maddening revelation.

She rolled her hips with frustration, feeling empty and aroused and so exquisitely uncomfortable. She moaned his name then, both a prayer and a curse.

"Shhh," he murmured. "Go ahead and touch yourself. Pretend like it's me touching you. Can you do that?" She made a desperate noise in the back of her throat instead of a reply, too aroused to form words, and he chuckled.

"Use the edge of my shirt," he said, and her sex-addled brain didn't quite comprehend until he explained further. "Hold the fabric over your fingers when you rub your clit, sweetheart. Imagine that the roughness is my hands."

She complied, tugging the edge of his button down over her palm before returning her attention to her slit. She bucked up against her hand at the first touch of the cotton, titillated by the new sensation.

She looked at the monitor, focused on the way his hand looked around his cock as he slowly stroked himself, focused on the hard plane of his stomach, the hollow of his throat and the dark pools of his eyes as he watched her squirm.

"You're doing great, baby," he said, reaching down to pull his testicles away from his body in an effort to stave off ejaculation, a little trick she'd taught him once. It made her feel exceptionally powerful to know that he was so close because of her, just from looking at her, from talking to her, from ordering her around while she touched herself.

"Now, let go of that gorgeous tit of yours and put a few of those fingers into your pussy."

It was getting hard to breathe in the room, almost as if the air had been sucked out, so difficult was it for her to catch her breath.

"Clint . . ."

"Come one, sweetheart. I want to see you fuck your hand," he said, then repeated it, something that should be absurd except she couldn't remember ever being simultaneously so fulfilled and forlorn. He kept sweet talking her, telling her all the dirty things he wanted to do with her when he got her alone, reminding her of all the ways he'd taken her in the past, all the ways she'd screwed him. She was holding her breath as her orgasm crept over her, and as he whispered to her, almost purring his words, she felt herself hover in ecstasy for what might have been an hour or a minute or a decade. And then she was crying out and clamping down around her fingers as a surge of wetness gushed over her hand.

When she calmed, she looked up to see Clint, red faced and sweaty, furiously working his dick between his hands, a positively deadly look of concentration on his face. She knew better than to interrupt; he didn't need much to get off, especially after a show like she'd just given him, so she was content to lay there for another long minute while he beat off, staring at her sated body, secure in the knowledge that his words brought her to that state.

When he came, thick spurts all over his palms and threading through his fingers, he choked out her name, a stifled cough, and it eased her mind to see that he wasn't looking at her tits when he came, but her mouth, her hair, her eyes, all the places he swore he liked best.

He fell backward, rubbing his forearm over his face and exhaling.

"The shit you do to me, Nat," he eventually chortled, then leaned up on one elbow to look at her. She smiled at his relaxed, happy expression.

"What's got you in such a good mood?" she asked, even though the answer was obvious.

"Well, I just got fucked by this incredibly hot red head . . ." he started, still half-laughing, and the mood felt so perfect, so _right_ that she was more certain than ever that she wanted to pursue something further with him, something more. The emotion of it though, especially after the day and the orgasm like she'd just had, well, those emotions were too much for her.

"I'm sorry to cut it short," she said, cutting off another yawn and sitting up. She pulled his shirt straight around her shoulders. "But I've really got to get some sleep."

He nodded, a little sadly, but just as aware of the exigencies of their day jobs. "Yeah, me, too. I've got an early morning."

She nodded and reached for the button, ready as ever to hang up without saying goodbye, but something stopped her this time.

"Clint?" she asked, reached up to touch her fingers to the edge of her webcam. He didn't reply, just put his fingers on his camera, too, and it was almost like they were touching through the electrons. There were so many things she wanted to say right now, but none of them fit, none of them worked, and some of them, well, some of them were even frighteningly emotional.

So she said the one thing she knew she wouldn't have second thoughts about, worrying that she somehow said the wrong thing or gave the wrong impression.

"I'll see you soon, okay?"

He smiled at her, somehow both happy and sorrowful. "See you soon, Nat," he replied, and then his screen cut off.

And if she closed her eyes and held her hand there against her computer for a minute before she put it away, there wasn't anybody around to tell the tale.

* * *

_If you made it all the way to the end, I would love to hear what you think!_


End file.
